As a regular on the elitist power circuit, from Davos to Bilderberg, where tycoons and financiers rub shoulders with policymakers, Mark Carney might seem an unlikely critic of the ‘growing exclusivity of capitalism’.

Last year in his FT lecture, the Bank of England governor made the case that the City was back open for business and could even become a bigger part of UK plc than at present.

At the inclusive capitalism conference in London, the governor sounded as if he had been doing some rethinking in the light of recent market-fixing scandals including the foreign exchange rigging affair that has entangled the Bank of England itself. Indeed, some of his comments came right out of the verbal locker of his predecessor Lord King who was often highly critical of the values of bankers and the role they played in fomenting the financial crisis.

Looking at the post-crisis banks Carney argued that the ‘too big to fail’ syndrome created a heads you win, tails you win bubble. There was widespread rigging of benchmarks such as Libor, the gold fix and foreign exchange for personal gain. Professional users of equity markets used technology to disadvantage the private investors for their own pecuniary advantage.

He argues that merely prosecuting the wrongdoers is not enough and that policymakers must act to ‘recreate fair and effective markets’.

In Carney’s view the ‘recent demonstrations of corruption’ in some of the financial markets ‘has eroded social capital’.

The governor’s robust views suggest a degree of shock at the way in which even something as severe as the worst financial crisis for a century did little to curb the rapacious greed of the bankers.

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At times the governor sounded as if he was taking his script from the ‘Occupy’ movement. He noted that within societies the inequality of outcomes within and across generations has increased. In this world the rewards of the superstars and the lucky have been amplified. Specifically in finance when ‘bankers become detached from end-users their only reward becomes money’.

It would be nice to think that Carney’s admonitions were to become the creed in boardrooms from Goldman Sachs to Barclays and Deutsche Bank. But what we have seen in recent months suggests that all the codes and regulation in the world have so far failed to curtail the unbridled greed and social defiance at the heart of finance.

Trust restored?

If Paul Pester is to be believed the new TSB, being spun off from Lloyds Banking Group, will be there to provide just the kind of vanilla, utility banking that the public craves.

The focus through its 630 branches will be on current accounts, savings and mortgages with clear, easy to understand products.

A standalone, quoted TSB is a much better outcome for the former Verde branches that came close to falling under the control of the nefarious Co-op Bank that let down itself, its ethical promise and its customers.

The TSB is aiming to woo retail investors in its shares with a loyalty bonus in the shape of one free share for every 20, if investors hang on for a year.

This is designed to prevent people heading immediately for the exit as they did with the Royal Mail offering and is in line with the bonus shares being offered to Saga customers.

Long-term investors in Lloyds who have seen the value of their savings battered and their dividend income suspended since the forced marriage with HBOS in 2008 might feel a little peeved that they will not directly benefit from the TSB sell-off. They may rightly feel that having lost out so badly, largely as a result of a government interference in the free market, they (not just the TSB subscribers) might have been entitled to some free shares in the new entity or a priority in the offering.

A Lloyds dividend may be closer, but they are right to be aggrieved.

Poisoned pills

Pfizer boss Ian Read was less than statesman-like in his withdrawal from the contest to buy AstraZeneca.

His complaints about the bureaucracy of the Takeover Panel seem particularly misplaced.

The informal role of the Panel is far preferable to the legalistic approach to takeovers in the US, where poison pills are the norm and almost every deal seems to end up in the Delaware court system.

Read conveniently forgets the complaints about the deal from the governors of Maryland and other states where there are Pfizer plants and the moves to close tax inversion loopholes on Capitol Hill.

Nor has he recognised that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US is far more intrusive when it comes to overseas takeovers in America than any institution we have in Britain.